Slashdot linked to
this article claiming that C/C++ are losing due to manual memory management.
From the article:

DDJ: Which languages seem to be losing ground?
PJ: C and C++ are definitely losing ground. There is a simple explanation for this. Languages without automated garbage collection are getting out of fashion.

Somehow I wonder... almost all Languages which have been
established as stable and useful Languages (C, C++, Perl)
are considered "ZOMG THEY ARE DEAD!!!!!1111". I wonder whether thats just because there is more of a hype around languages like Haskell, Ocaml, Ruby, Java or Python.

IMO a language is not dead while there are still programmers
that use it. Smalltalk, for example, still has
a small but active community, and as long as there is
such a community, the language won't just "die".

All this "this language dies" and "that language dies" sounds like big marketing foo and zealots fearing that their
"favorite" tool is going not to be "cool" anymore. Languages, like natural languages, are changing IMO, and if one language is not up to the job, there will be another one. Currently there is no alternative to Perl (5), and there won't be one for the next 5-7 years. And it will be still around in 20 years.

I don't personally consider COBOL to be a living language, even though there are plenty of people still using it. My definition is that if the main argument in its favor is keeping legacy applications going, it's a dead language.

"There is no shame in being self-taught, only in not trying to learn in the first place." -- Atrus, Myst: The Book of D'ni.

Your reasoning about D stands, but you should also consider that "languages that could replace C" also includes Java and the common dynamic languages, for a lot of programs that shouldn't have been written in C in the first place.

when they start writing fast kernels in Java, that will be the day I switch. Honestly, I think the real reason they don't have better C memory mangement, is because the college professors either don't know how to teach it, or the students are rushed thru, and they don't allow enough time to teach it. Everyone wants "canned memory management", and "point-and-click" GUI designers. I think the Universities consider you a success if you can do Excel Spreadsheets, and put a database on the Net. Anything more is considered PHd level. :-)

Actually I thought Perl makes a pretty good percentage showing, considering it's OpenSource, freely supported, and not backed by a major corporation.

Tho I suppose by properly torturing the statistics, one can state that
a language's popularity is inversely proportional to the number of
available jobs for the language (assuming we ignore languages that
start with "Java").

Ada Lovelace for the palindrome
Albert Einstein for having smelly feet
Alfred Nobel for his contribution to battlefield science
Burkhard Heim for providing the missing link between science and mysticism
Claude Shannnon for riding a unicycle at night at MIT
Donald Knuth for being such a great organist
Edward Teller for being the template for Dr. Strangelove
Edwin Hubble for pretending to be a pipe-smoking English gentleman
Erwin Schrödinger for cruelty to cats
Hedy Lamarr for weaponizing pianos
Hugh Everett for immortality, especially for cats
Isaac Newton for his occult studies
Kikunae Ikeda for discovering the secrets of soy sauce
Larry Wall for his website
Louis Camille Maillard for discovering why steaks taste good
Marie Curie for the shiny stuff
Nikola Tesla for the cool cars
Paul Dirac for speaking one word per hour when socializing
Richard Feynman for his bongo skills
Robert Oppenheimer for his in-depth knowledge of the Bhagavad Gita
Rusi P Taleyarkhan for Cold Fusion
Sigmund Freud for his Ménage ā trois
Theodor W Adorno for his contribution to the reception of jazz
Wilhelm Röntgen for the foundations of body scanners
Yulii Borisovich Khariton for the Tsar Bomba
Other (please explain why)